Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

Turn Aside to See

(?)

LEGEND HAS IT THAT THERE was once a sign along an Alaskan highway that brought a smile to many a motorist:

Choose your rut carefully—

You'll be in it for the next 200 miles.

We who live in this fast-paced jungle, this never-slowing treadmill of our high-tech society, have no idea how deeply entrenched we are in the rut of routine until we deliberately step aside and give ourselves permission to change our pace. Who can criticize any of that? There are meetings to attend, lessons to prepare, rehearsals to make, and songs to sing, all of it healthy and wholesome. After all, there is a big job to get done, and "the workers are few" (Matthew 9:37). Faithfulness is a big part of maturity, no question.

But somewhere along the way it is easy to allow ourselves to fall into a long, monotonous rut of religious activity. If you're like me, it frequently rears its head around the dog days of September before the cooler days of fall. You and I find ourselves in need of spiritual refreshment, a fresh touch from God. What we need is a fresh perspective:

One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock far into the wilderness and came to Sinai, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn't burn up. "This is amazing," Moses said to himself. "Why isn't that bush burning up? I must go see it."

EXODUS 3:1–3

Perhaps some circumstance or period of adversity has sent you deep into the wilderness—you've been unexpectedly forced out of your comfortable routine—those ruts you've been in for the last hundred miles of living. Rather than resist it, lean into it. Move toward what God may be using to speak into your life. You just may receive that fresh perspective you didn't even realize you've needed. Something burning?